The Sargasso Sea as a Mediological Archive:Transduction of the Maritime Imagination

Journal of Maritime Literature and Culture

JMLC, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2026, pp.26-46.

Print ISSN: 3107-1821; Online ISSN: 3107-183X

Journal homepage: https://www.mlcjournal.com

DOI： https://doi.org/10.64058/JMLC.26.1.03

The Sargasso Sea as a Mediological Archive:Transduction of the Maritime Imagination

Youngmin Kim

Abstract: This paper proposes a mediological re-reading of modern maritime literature by conceptualizing the sea not as a geographical void, but as a transductive medium of cultural memory. Employing Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s spatial theory of “smooth space” (espace lisse) and Marc Shell’s “Islandology,” I argue that the Sargasso Sea functions as a paradigmatic “Hydraulic Archive.” This archive is a non-linear, fluid repository where the “striated” hardware of imperial history is shipwrecked, suspended, and transformed into a maritime memory-assemblage. The analysis proceeds through three major movements. First, it examines Ezra Pound’s poetics, where the Sargasso Sea serves as the mediological soil of the modern subject, archiving the “deciduous” fragments of London’s metropolitan debris. Second, it explores Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a site of postcolonial transduction, where the rigid coastlines of imperial reason dissolve into the “fluid fire” of Caribbean subjectivity. Finally, it repositions Ireland as a “Smooth Island” through the works of W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney. By synthesizing Yeats’s horizontal “acoustic Sargasso” with Heaney’s vertical “bog-aesthetics,” this research identifies Ireland as a transductive interface that dissolves the imperial grid from within. This study suggests that the modern self is a fluid network—a “Vertical Sargasso”—that archives history through intensive stasis. In our contemporary digital age, the logic of the coastless sea provides a vital model for understanding the borderless and non-linear flow of global information, resulting in a profound transduction of the human subject within the oceanic imaginary.
Keywords: Sargasso Sea; Hydraulic Archive; Transduction; Smooth Space; Islandology
Author Biography: Youngmin Kim, Honorary Professor/Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, Dongguk University, Seoul Korea; Qiantang Scholar/Guest Professor, College of International Education, Hangzhou Normal University; Visiting Professor, Department of Film and Comparative Literature/Center for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS), Linnaeus University, Sweden; Research interest includes literatures in English, modern and contemporary Irish, British, Canadian, and American poetry, critical theory, film and cultural studies, psychoanalysis and literature, comparative literature, translation studies, transmedia and digital culture, world literature, digital humanities, and new techno humanities, AI Humanities. E-mail: youngm@dongguk.edu; youngm@hznu.edu.cn.

题目：作为媒介学档案的萨加索海：海洋想象力的转换

摘要：本文通过将海洋概念化为文化记忆转导媒介（transductive medium），而非地理上的真空,提出了对现代海洋文学的媒介学（mediological）重读。本文借鉴吉尔·德勒兹与费利克斯·加塔利的“平滑空间（smoothspace）空间理论以及马克·谢尔的“岛屿学”（Islandology），论证了萨加索海（Sargasso Sea）作为一个范式性的“水力档案馆”（Hydraulic Archive）而运作。这一档案馆是一个非线性的流体仓库，在此，帝国历史的“条纹化”（striated）硬件经历了船难、悬浮，并最终转化为一种海洋性的记忆装配（memory-assemblage）。本研究分三个主要阶段展开。首先，分析艾兹拉·庞德的诗学，其中萨加索海作为现代主体的媒介学土壤，记录了伦敦大都市废墟中的“落叶式”

（deciduous）碎片。其次，探讨珍·里斯的《广阔的萨加索海》，将其视为后殖民转导的场域，在此，帝国理性的僵化海岸线溶解于加勒比主体性的“流动之火”。最后，通过W.B.叶芝与西莫斯·希尼的作品，将爱尔兰重新定位为一个“平滑岛屿”。通过整合叶芝的水平“听觉萨加索”与希尼的垂直“沼泽美学”,本研究确认爱尔兰为一个从内部溶解帝国网格的转导接口。本研究表明，现代自我是一个流动网络——即一种“垂直萨加索”——通过强密性静止（intensive stasis）归档历史。在当代的数字时代，无海岸之海的逻辑为理解全球信息的无国界、非线性流动提供了一个至关重要的模型，从而在海洋想象力中实现了人类主体的深刻转导。

关键词：萨加索海；水力档案馆；转导；平滑空间；岛屿学

作者简介：金英敏（Youngmin Kim），现任职务：韩国东国大学（Dongguk University）名誉教授/卓越研究名誉教授,杭州师范大学（Hangzhou Normal University）国际教育学院钱塘学者/客座教授,瑞典林奈大学（Linnaeus University）电影与比较文学系/跨媒介与多模态研究中心（IMS）客座教授，研究领域：英语文学、现代及当代爱尔兰、英国、加拿大与美国诗歌、批评理论、电影与文化研究、精神分析与文学、比较文学、翻译研究、跨媒体与数字文化、世界文学、数字人文学、新科技人文学以及人工智能(AI)人文学。电子邮箱：youngm@dongguk.edu, youngm@hznu.edu.cn。